


The Time For You to Come to Me

by ladybugwarrior



Category: Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fairy Tale Curses, KKC Holdiay Exchange 2018, Romance, kind of a fairytale au but canon already has fae elements soo?, some angst but that is just because kvothe is Like That
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 15:39:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybugwarrior/pseuds/ladybugwarrior
Summary: When Kvothe’s parents died he lost the ability to hear music. The curse was cruel, and only meeting ones soulmate could break the curse. Only one other person had been freed before him.





	The Time For You to Come to Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theredwateringcan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=theredwateringcan).



When Kvothe’s parents died he lost the ability to hear music. At first, when he plucked the strings to his father’s lute and heard no sound, he felt no fear or loss. You’re in shock, what remained of his working mind told him. Soon, you will hear the notes, the soft melodies that always carried you to sleep as a young child. He never did. One day, Kvothe realized his malady existed outside his own fragmented mind. That day he remembered a curse, old magic from the Fae world. Abenthy had told him that there were royals who betrayed an old Fae queen and killed her son. In retaliation, she had cursed their bloodlines. Some families lost the ability to speak, some lost taste, others touch. Those families took the person that the queen loved the most, so the queen made sure that when the bloodlines felt that same loss she did, they would suffer even more. Abenthy told him the curse waited until a great tragedy befell the family and took away whatever the surviving member would have taken comfort in. The curse was cruel, and only meeting ones soulmate could break the curse. Only one other person had been freed before him.

Melodies from his childhood, locked deep in his mind, soon became the only music he had left. They weren’t normal children’s songs, both too intricate and mature. He hadn’t known any better back then. The lyrics flew right over his head until he got old enough to think critically about them. Back when he had first learned the true meaning of those songs, he had laughed at his own stupidity. He could not smile at them, not while he tried to hold on to the voices that sang them. On the nights when he could not sleep in the Commonwealth forests, Kvothe sang those songs and played them on his father’s old lute. He could not hear the music he made, but somehow it helped.

Some other homeless, orphaned child smashed his lute into pieces the first day he got to Tarbean. He thought that would have been the worst problem he had, but Kvothe had never lived on his own before, and he had rarely gone to cities that large. Tarbean sounded like nothing he had ever heard before, there were screams and drunken laughs and arguments constantly. People moved so fast in Tarbean, and Kvothe had no choice but to learn how to move faster to stay alive.

Five long years, he lived on stone streets and frigid rooftops. Five years until he found a caravan led by a kind man named Roent. Roent put him to work immediately, but he was kind enough. A few days he spent with Roent and his wife alone before she came. She called herself Denna and hearing her speak was the closest he had gotten to hearing music since the night fire turned blue and iron rusted.

“Where are you going?” He asked one day when they had snuck away from their chores to lay in a nearby field. Kvothe hadn’t known much about Denna at that point, where she came from, where she wanted to go and why. All he did know was that she liked the color red and loved scary stories.

She answered in the mysterious way she always did. “I don’t know, haven’t decided yet. What about you?”

Kvothe told her about his plans to go the University and study. He didn’t tell her about his infliction or what had killed is parents, but he had told her about Abenthy and how he learned sympathy at a young age.

“I’ve never met a sympathest before.” She handed him two nearby stones, no larger than his thumbs. “Show me.”

He linked the stones, picked one up and the other followed just like it was supposed to, and he pushed the rock towards Denna.

“Amazing,” Her laugh was a beautiful sound, and she plucked the rock from air. “Is this what you’re going to study when you get to the University.”

“I’m going to learn every secret the University has hidden in the Archives. Every demon, every malady, every cure,” Kvothe said. “You’ve been looking for a place to go, why not come to the University with me?”

“It isn’t that simple.” She handed him back the stone.

Kvothe had known that he could not change her mind, and that it would have been unfair to try. Instead, he set the stone in her hand, wrapped her fingers around it, and laid a kiss on her knuckles. “Keep it, the stones are bound, so maybe one day it will bring us back together.”

Denna left the next day. He hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye, all he had of her was a stone in his pocket.

He got to the University three days after she left, and his admittance came quickly enough. He met Simm and Wil, they both dragged him to the Eolian the night he got arrived. The thought of watching soundless instruments made his heart ache, but Kvothe joined in anyways.

On the way to the Eolian, that’s when he heard it, a musician tuned their lute on the bridge that led to Imre. Just one note that changed in pitch when the student tightened and loosened. Kvothe hadn’t recognized the sound for a moment, and he hadn’t noticed he had tears running down his cheeks until Simm asked him what the matter was. In a dead run, he went to the Eolian. Before Kvothe could even get to the door he heard a soft melodic harp carried over the wind. He fell to the ground and sobbed, for how long he didn’t know.

Denna, she was his soul mate.

The day he got a lute, Kvothe played it for hours on end. He missed classes playing the songs his mother and father once sang to him. No matter how much he played though, Kvothe still felt a piece missing in him. All the notes were there, but each of them felt hollowed out. Something was still missing, and he knew that he had to find Denna again to figure out what.

Every night, Kvothe played at the Eolian. Song after song, night after night, he searched for Denna. Kvothe kept the stone in his pocket when he played and hoped that she would hear his song and come to him.

He thought about traveling the Commonwealth to find her. Maybe he would have found her in some spectacular place, the hidden area of the world that she had searched for all that time. Kvothe almost left a dozen times, but he had told her to find him here. One day she would walk into the Eolian and he would be there playing for her. He always played for her.

The Lay of Sir Savien Traliard, the piece was complicated, but Denna had once told him that it was her favorite. The song was a duet, he sang alone. When the women’s part came in Kvothe played the leading melody over and over again without her voice joining in. Kvothe would sit there for years playing the same melody until his fingers bled, until every string had broken, until he fell over dead from old age.

Then...

_ “Savien, how could you know _

_ It was the time for you to come to me? _

_ Savien, do you remember _

_ The days we squandered pleasantly? _

_ How well then have you carried what _

_ Have tarried in my heart and memory?” _

Kvothe’s fingers almost ripped over themselves when he heard Denna’s voice. Her voice carried the same effortless beauty that she had engrained in her very being. When the song ended, Kvothe searched the crowd filled with cheering, drunken students and found her. Standing in the back, a small stone in her hand. The Eolian patrons seemed to part around him like water and soon enough he stood before her.

“So,” She said. “Have you learned all the worlds secrets?”

“I don’t know.” Kvothe took her hand, “But I think that I might be getting close.”


End file.
